


one

by wildcard_47



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Ask Box, F/M, One Shot, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-02-16 07:23:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2260983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildcard_47/pseuds/wildcard_47
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taken from a tumblr meme in which each prompt is based on the definition of a single word.</p><p>1. Joan/Lane: "Mamihlapinatapei."<br/>2. Roger/Joan: "Malapert."<br/>3. Megan/Don: "Druxy."<br/>4. Dawn/Ginsberg: "Sphallolalia."<br/>5. Ginsberg/Stan: "Capernoited."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. mamihlapinatapei

**Author's Note:**

> _Mamihlapinatapei_ \- "The look between two people in which each loves the other but is too afraid to make the first move.” (I misread this slightly as "too afraid to say it" -- still works, haha.)

He said it once.  
  
Well. Almost. Joan was splayed forward against his chest, spent, trying to get her breath back, when she felt his hand trail through her damp hair, brushing several thick locks away from her forehead.  
  
"I love—" he gasped, then hissed out a long breath, and stopped talking, like he’d done something completely unforgivable.  
  
When she’d pushed herself up onto one forearm to gauge his expression, a shadow of his usual anxiety had come back to his face.  
  
"Just—sorry," he said quickly, eyes locked with hers. His face was still bright red. "Don’t…pay me any mind, hm?"  
  
She brushed a hand over the apple of his cheek in silent rebuke. Don’t apologize. Joan could have blurted out other words to him, too—just as simply, just as quickly—but she didn’t.  
  
As a rule, she doesn’t allow herself to dwell on sentiment, to think about the way his smile turns crooked when they argue about the books at work, or the way he sometimes looks at her when they make love—his freckled face so rich with affection and desire it once made her cry, afterward. Most of all, she doesn’t think about the reasons why, after an entire year, they still meet here in a midtown hotel, at seven o’clock on the dot every Thursday night. This thing between them, whatever it is, was not supposed to be a permanent arrangement. They both knew that.  
  
 _I love you._ By the time the words have built in her throat they’ve already dissolved on her tongue. Joan doesn’t even know why she’s scared to speak up, or why one small admission of feeling should matter, except that she is, and it does.  
  
"Are you hungry?" she asked instead, pulling her hand away, and feeling her heart jump inside her chest as he blinked back at her: sated, relaxed, yet almost disappointed.  
  
"Oh—erm, I suppose I could eat. If you’re going to, anyway."  
  
She smiled at him, gentle, then rolled to her right, and reached for the telephone.


	2. malapert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Malapert: Clever in manners of speech.” Consider it to be set anytime in season 7A. :)

Joan’s high heels clicked loudly on the marble floor as she strode through the lobby, practically at a jog, trying to catch the open elevator before it departed. There was another person inside the car – a grey-suited arm held the doors at bay – and as she entered the elevator, letting out a relieved sigh, she couldn’t help but smirk at him.

Roger grinned back at her, eyes dancing with mischief. “Hot date, Red?”

Joan gave an amused sniff, and adjusted the strap of her attaché case on her shoulder. The heavy doors slid shut. “At this hour?”

“Hey, you always did like it when I’d buy you breakfast.” He pressed the button for floor thirty-eight, and seemed content to lean against the far left wall, watching her reaction, one hand fumbling unseen to reach the lighter in his inside jacket pocket. She knows he’s going to take out his cigarettes the second before they hit the landing, just like she knows that if she holds his gaze directly, looks at him for a second too long, he’ll see that as an invitation—pin her back against the steel wall and take her right here, muscles straining as they move together, rushed and fierce and desperate.

 _Don’t dwell on that._ She gets out her compact instead.

“Must be difficult, getting teenagers into bed,” she said innocently, glancing at him over the top of her mirror before snapping it closed with one hand, and putting it back inside her purse. Her mouth twisted into a wry expression. She’s made it a habit not to keep up with Roger’s many paramours, but rumors still fly, and supposedly he was spotted by one of the freelancers at an avant-garde party, in the company of two very young bohemians.

“Try getting them out. It’s like herding cats.” A pause. He stopped laughing for a moment. “How’s the homestead? Gail still pitching in?”

She braced her shoulder in a shrug, pretending to brush a little fleck of dust from her left lapel. They don’t usually talk like this; they’re too careful around each other, most days. Sometimes it’s easy to remember that things could have gone another way, that she could have a diamond on her finger, and a girl to help her with Kevin and the housework. Hard to believe she would have ever wanted to stay at home. Less unbelievable that she wanted Roger to love her.  She still wonders about him, even now, even after all this time. “We’re all well. Although I can barely pick Kevin up, these days.”

Roger raises an eyebrow. “Heavyweight, huh? Maybe you could mimic one of those Scandinavians.” He makes a fist with his left hand, pretending to flex his arm, and not bothering to hide his wide grin. “Joanie the weightlifter.”

She tried not to smile, but he saw the corners of her mouth twitch up, and made a satisfied noise.

The elevator glided to a stop, and the doors opened. He motioned for her to lead the way, a cigarette now dangling from his lips. “Next stop: Kansas City.”

Joan did laugh this time. “You hate the Midwest.”


	3. druxy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Druxy: Something which looks good on the outside, but is actually rotten inside."
> 
> Prompt filled for adreadfulidea, who requested any pairing. This one came to mind right off the bat. Consider it to be set in the last half of season 6/early part of season 7A.

Don didn’t come home until after midnight, and although Megan woke up furious as he stumbled into bed, stinking, greasy, spent—she didn’t say a word. She just got up the next morning while he was still passed out and made the kids breakfast: scrambled eggs and bacon and toast and orange juice. They were all absorbed in their food—Megan standing in the kitchen, on the opposite side of the counter, sipping her coffee—when Bobby suddenly spoke.

“Can we go to the park today?”

She glanced up from the depths of her mug, stunned. “Really?”

Sally rolled her eyes, snorting out a laugh. A lock of blonde hair fell into her eyes. “God. What a baby.”

“I’m _not_ a baby,” Bobby protested. “We’re not allowed to play ball inside!”

“Who’s gonna play?” she retorted, a smirk spreading across her face. “Baby Gene?”

Bobby’s face fell. He put down his fork and crossed his arms over his chest, with a little whining noise. “You’re being a jerk.”

Gene, wriggling in his barstool seat, accidentally flung eggs across his section of the counter with his plastic spoon, so excited he strung all his words together. “Meg-I-want-go-park!”

“Hush. We’ll go,” Megan said quickly, moving to pour her coffee in the sink.

They spread a blanket in the grass. On Megan’s right side, Don lay down on his back and slept with his hat tipped over his face, probably still drunk. It had taken her twenty minutes to force him out of bed and into the shower. Sally lay on Megan’s other side, reading a book and listening to her transistor, the music so low it was barely audible.

Megan, wearing oversize round sunglasses, a paisley blouse and black leggings, and the floppy hat she’d bought in Hawaii, sat with her knees tucked up to her chest and watched the boys run around in the thin patches of grass beyond their blanket. True to their word, Bobby and Gene were throwing a wiffle ball – or really, Bobby was lobbing it at Gene and encouraging him to catch it, trying to show him how to toss it, while the toddler seemed content to giggle and wander around in whatever direction the ball happened to land.

“Excuse me,” said a voice to their left, and Megan glanced over toward the foot path. It was an elderly woman in a brown shirtwaist dress and grey raincoat, her hair bright blue and her arthritic hands curled around the wooden handle of a large carpetbag. Her husband was with her, too. From this angle, Megan could see the hem of his trousers flapping around his thin ankles in the summer breeze. “I just wanted to say you have the prettiest family.”

Sally didn’t look up from her book, but let out a noise like a scoff. Megan didn’t correct her.

“Thank you.” She gave the woman one of her best client smiles – it felt tight around the eyes, but the stranger didn’t seem to notice. Megan watched the old couple walk away and wasn’t sure if the lump in her stomach was due to pity, disgust, or some combination of both.


	4. sphallolalia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Sphallolalia: Flirtatious talk that leads nowhere."
> 
> Prompt from adreadfulidea: “Ginsberg/Dawn, if you feel like writing something different!”

He didn’t notice it until Draper was gone. She’d always been so quiet all the time.

Suddenly, everything went to shit and they’d all gotten slammed: re-doing the copy Lou hated, writing storyboards and mock-ups and panels and lists until their hands were arthritic claws, living eating breathing RFPs and Heinz and Avon until a vein throbbed constant behind Ginsberg’s eyes. People were always sore with each other.

One day, he’d rushed up to Dawn’s desk with a note from Lou gripped in his hand—the illegible scrawl doing nothing to ease his headache. “What the hell does this thing say? Do you know?”

She’d raised an eyebrow at the line of messy handwriting, the earpiece of the telephone tucked between her left ear and her shoulder. “Do I look like a fortune teller to you?”

He was so surprised he almost ran straight into Scarlett on the way back to creative.

“That’s _awesome,_ ” Stan pronounced when Ginsberg relayed the story.

Peggy was less enthusiastic. “So what did you say?”

Oh, god. Shit. He hadn’t said anything.

**

He started going by Dawn’s desk a little more often; dropping stuff off with her instead of Lou, or taking the long way around to the vending machine. And it wasn’t romantic—he liked talking to her, sure, but that was where it stopped, it was nothing weird. To be honest, he just wanted her to crack another joke; only this time she’d make a comment and then maybe he’d have a decent reply and it would be like something out of one of those old Hollywood movies.

They were filing into Lou’s office for a meeting when he tried talking to her again. “Some weather we’re having, here.”

A crack of thunder sounded in the distance. He wished he’d gone with a different opener, said something about the office instead, and just as he was sure he felt his palms start to sweat, he saw the corners of her mouth turn up in a smile.

“Of course you’d like the rain.”

“Hey,” he managed to sputter, gripping his notebook by the spiral binding as he talked. “You know, they make those nature records for a reason.”

**

“So, Peggy thinks you two’re in love and just won’t admit it.”

Ginsberg scowled, his head jerking up from where he’d been examining some concept sketches to glare at Stan. “What? No. Look—just because you see me talking to a woman doesn’t mean I’m interested in all that crap. We talk sometimes. That’s it.”

“So if Dawn came up to you, put a hand on your zipper, and said she wanted to make out, you’d just…reject her?”

He let out a growl, tossing his pencil onto the desk. “You’re a real asshole _._ ”

“What?” Stan raised two hands in the air, as if surrendering. “I’m serious; I wanna know!”

**

Peggy and Stan were at lunch, and he was sitting in front of his desk without working, trying to stay as far away from everyone as possible because they were just too damn annoying, when there was a knock on his office door.

“Who is it?” he yelled.

There was a noise like a sigh or a laugh. “UPS.”

He sighed. If it was Dawn, she probably had print proofs from Lou to drop off. And he really didn’t want to do any work, but he also didn’t want to be the jackass who ran her off for no reason. When he opened the door, she saw the frown on his face and raised her eyebrows.

“Should I drive around the block?” In her arms were several thick job files, balanced precariously on top of one another like layers of an uneven cake. They’d topple all over the hallway if he kicked her out.

“No, I don’t care if you come in.”

He glanced around the room as she walked inside, suddenly self-conscious because there were loose papers and candy wrappers and shit all over the nearest chairs. He didn’t clean. Stan sure as hell didn’t, and every time they tried to get Peggy to do it she just laughed. _Nope._

“Uh, you want any—help with those?” he asked lamely. She shook her head no.

“I set them down here, I may never find them again.”

“Yeah,” he said, feeling sheepish, and running a hand through the back of his hair. “Uh. Don’t say anything to Joan; I think she might try to kill us if she ever saw this place.”

Dawn actually laughed. He felt a surge of pride.

"Uh. So which one’s…"

“Yours are the two on top.” She gestured with the pile in his general direction. He took the brown folios from her outstretched arms, and tossed the first one onto the nearby green couch. Watching her mouth twitch like she wanted to laugh again, he lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

“I don’t know. Maybe it could be some kind of game.”

She gave him a look that said _don’t be an idiot._ “I think you’d best take a couple of aspirin before you hurt yourself.”

He scoffed, but it was funny. He didn’t mind her teasing him because she was never mean about it. “Yeah, well, if you bring ‘em, I’ll take ‘em.”

“All right,” she said, lifting her chin to him as if saying a quiet hello across a crowded room, and indicating he should open the door for her. “Don’t lock me out.”


	5. capernoited

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Capernoited: Slightly drunk or tipsy.

The door to creative burst open with a bang.

Stan didn’t even flinch, just looked up to see a breathless Ginsberg framed in the doorway.  It was probably past ten, now. Kid had gone down to thirty-four to raid the magazine’s vending machine. Apparently those guys worked late and always had Baby Ruths, and the machine up here was out, and for a series of defensive explanations Stan really didn’t need to hear, Ginsberg went down there.

Now he was back, with no candy in sight, and sucking wind.

“I saw— _augh_ —”

The kid was bent over at the waist with his hands braced on his knees, like he’d just done twenty shuttle runs. It was kind of pathetic.

“Jesus,” Stan reached down into the bottom desk drawer to grab a bottle of water. Peggy put it in there about a month ago, but it had been collecting dust ever since. “Get some water already.”

Before he could hand over the bottle, Ginsberg was rushing toward Stan’s desk, picking up a nearly empty mason jar whose missing lid sat on top of a nearby stack of papers.

“No, don’t—!”

The kid swallowed about two chugs worth before he was able to wrench the mouth of the jar away from his lips, gagging and coughing as he shoved the glass container back onto the desk. Clear liquid slopped over one side and onto a sketch Stan had been working on the day before.

Ginsberg was glaring at the jar as if it had burned him.

“Yeah. I was afraid of that.” Stan reached over and put the lid on the jar.

Ginsberg wiped his streaming eyes as he tried to catch his breath, still wheezing. A full-body shiver overtook the kid before he could speak.

“What the _fuck_?”

Stan scratched the back of his neck with a hand. “I mentioned my neighbor made the good stuff, right?”

Ginsberg looked horrified, muffling a deep cough against the back of his hand. “What is wrong with you?”

“Hey. It was a Christmas present!”

Ginzo was still coughing, his face turning red.

Stan pulled some candy out of the second drawer. “You’re gonna want to eat something.”

“Shut up,” the kid scoffed between coughs, like Stan was stupid. “I’ll be fine.”

 

**

 

“You know what, I’ve never—shit—”

The kid tried to jump up from the sofa at his usual manic speed, but he pitched backwards with a snort of laughter, slumping out onto the arm of the sofa and then wriggling down onto the floor, and lying on his side.

Man, he was definitely a lightweight.

“Okay, man. We’re gonna sit up.” Stan helped move Ginsberg into a sitting position. This wasn’t exactly what he’d planned to do with his evening, but hey, being the human drunk tank was better than letting the kid go home to Morris, or letting him wander the park, or whatever it was Ginzo did when he got lowered inhibitions.

“Did we get food? I’m starving.”

They’d ordered Chinese about twenty minutes ago. Stan knew the munchies when he saw them, and frankly, he’d been waiting for Ginsberg to stagger into the kitchen and start rifling through other people’s lunches.

“Yeah, it’s coming.”

“Good.” Ginsberg was grinning really big. “I can’t get over this, man.”

“What—being drunk?”

“Who keeps a jar of liquor on their desk? Are you one of the Beverly Hillbillies?”

Stan snorted out a laugh. “Want me to try the accent?”

“Fuck, no.” Ginsberg started giggling.

 

**

 

They were sitting on the floor of the lounge, fishing water chestnuts out of their cartons with chopsticks. Well, Stan was, anyway. Ginsberg had to use a fork instead, and kept stabbing at the middle of his carton, trying to yank up little bites, slurping noodles up like strings of spaghetti. What he was really doing was flinging sauce all over them both.

“Shit!” Stan shielded his eyes with one arm to keep from getting lo mein in his retinas. Broth splattered the side of his hand. “Man, you gotta stop that.”

Ginzo made an outraged noise. “How else am I supposed to eat?”

Stan shrugged, but took the opportunity to lick sauce off his wrist before it could dribble all over his arm. When he looked up again, Ginsberg was staring at him.

“What, did I get it in my beard or something?” He swiped at his chin with one hand.

“Uh,” Ginsberg shook his head, opening and closing his mouth like a confused fish. “No. No.”

“Ooookay.”

Stan went back to chomping down on his spicy shrimp, but the silence that stretched between them was short-lived.

“D’you ever—think about Bob Benson?”

Weird question. “No.”

Stan was about to point out that Bob was the agency’s human gopher—what the hell could there be to think about—when Ginsberg spoke again, rushed.

“I don’t mean like— _shit—_ it’s like gym, you know, you just—go in the showers, and pick a fucking corner, and you don’t—you keep your eyes down.”

Okay, so there were a lot of words in that sentence Stan wasn’t expecting, exactly, but the gist of the conversation was getting clearer. He suddenly wished he’d smoked a little, or had more to drink, something.

“So—” he cleared his throat, not knowing what the hell to say. He wished Chief was here. “You think Bobby’s…”

He made a kind of jerk-off gesture with one hand, still holding his chopsticks.

Ginsberg wasn’t looking at him, and didn’t notice; he just stared off down the hall toward reception. “He says he isn’t. I don’t know.”

_Do you want him to be?_

Stan was pretty sure Ginsberg would bolt if he asked that question out loud, so he just fished another piece of carrot out of his carton and popped it into his mouth. It tasted like cardboard. He wasn’t hungry anymore.

“I like girls,” Ginsberg blurted, like there was another person listening in—his voice was so loud it echoed across the office. This said, he pushed his fork into his noodles, accidentally knocking his carton of lo mein onto the takeout bag as he spoke. Greasy broth started to ooze out of one corner of the carton. “I’m not—you know I’m not—”

“Ginzo. Hey.”

On pure instinct, Stan reached out and grabbed for Ginsberg’s left wrist—not in a mean way—at least, he didn’t want it to seem mean, but the kid jumped as quick as if Stan had just slapped him.

“What are you—?”

Stan clamped down on the urge to ask more questions, feeling totally out of his goddamn league. What would Peggy say to something like this? Fuck—what would Joyce say? Why the hell did his throat feel like it was closing up all of a sudden?

“Look,” he began, and that was all he was able to get out before Ginsberg leaned over and kissed him.

It wasn’t some big moment. Honestly, the kiss was so quick Stan was pretty sure it had never happened at all. It was quick and quiet and—shy—and if he hadn’t still been holding Ginsberg by the wrist, he could almost have hallucinated the whole thing. He felt tongue-tied and weird, like he was thirteen again, seeing Becky Pearson in her new two-piece at the neighborhood pool.

Ginsberg was leaning against the edge of the couch, eyes squeezed shut, muttering to himself in Hebrew. Stan glanced over to see the kid put a hand over his face, and for a horrifying second he was sure it meant Ginzo was gonna cry.

“Everything’s cool,” he said quickly, gripping his friend’s wrist a little tighter, and trying to keep his voice level. “It—look, you’re drunk. I don’t care. It’s okay.”

Stan didn’t say anything else, and didn’t move, just kept his hand clamped around Ginsberg’s arm, feeling the kid’s heart beat an anxious tattoo against his fingers. After at least two minutes of sitting like this, when Stan finally looked over again, Ginsberg had taken his right hand away from his face. His cheeks were dry.

“Don’t tell Peggy,” was all he whispered, meeting Stan’s eyes, and the way the kid was shaking nearly broke Stan’s heart. Jesus.

“I won’t.”

An awkward silence settled around them. Stan decided to toss the kid a bone, like they’d just been sitting here goofing around, playing some kind of bit part. His voice cracked over the first word as he spoke. “ _I am the ghost of Shadwell Stair_...”

Ginsberg made a sniffing noise, and took a second to respond. “Um. W—Wilfred Owen.”

Oh, thank god. “Yep. Good one. Um. _Because I could not stop for_ —”

“Dickinson. Jesus, just p-pick—something harder.”

After what was probably five minutes of this game, mindless back and forth, Stan decided he could finally let go of Ginsberg’s wrist. The palm of his right hand still felt hot to the touch, and he rubbed at it with the thumb of his opposite hand, tracing over pencil calluses and blisters and lifelines like he was stoned out of his mind.

“Uh. Okay— _a mountainous and mystic brute_ …”

Kid didn’t even crack a smile—and it was one of his favorites—but his eyes held Stan’s for a half-second longer than normal before he looked away.

“Chesterton. Whatever.”


End file.
